I use "number of milliseconds since the Epoch" in most cases where I need to refer to an absolute time. This has the benefit/drawback of being completely timezone-independent. In my [[PDW]], I use specialized strings representing this number in [[Alternate Counting Bases|base-36]] as short timestamps. In that context, I would call one of those representations an `EpochStr`.
They end up looking like `M2KV9XKH`.
# Obtaining these strings
In [[JavaScript]]/[[TypeScript]] it's easy.
```javascript
const myEpochStr = new Date().getTime().toString(36);
const myDate = new Date(parseInt('', 36))
```
In new-ish versions of **Excel**, you can get _close_[^1] to this number using:
```plaintext
=BASE((NOW()-DATE(1970,1,1))*86400000,36)
```
And in [[Python]] it's a bit less straightforward:
```python
from numpy import base_repr
import time
def getEpochStr():
return base_repr(round(time.time() * 1000),36)
```
****
## Source
- Self
## Related
[^1]: This will be off by whatever the offset is between your timezone and the UTC "Z" timezone.